Came here to say Mark, was not disappointed. However I feel like his relatively rudimentary root-note basslines held me back initially, I will never forget that blink is the reason I started playing music. Did you buy the Hoppus bass as well? Unlike the Delonge guitar, it actually was worth it.

I can't remember. My sister had one and I asked if I could give it a go. She told me how to read tabs and how to tune by ear and away I went. I just wanted to learn guitar but chords where too hard. If my sister could play bass then I was damn sure I could too.

I remember walking through a music shop as an 8 year old and plucking a bass string and being intrigued as to why I couldn't hear it. I remember see Paul McCartney playing one on Beatles videos but I don't think I was ever 'inspired' until I could already play it.

I didn't really get inspired by any one bass player...as primarily a guitar player, i just started picking up the bass when my friends and I would jam and picked it up way faster than guitar. But now that i actually play, i would say my biggest inspiration is probably phil lesh...like me, phil's first instrument was not the bass. His melodic approach has always really done it for me, or maybe it's just because i really fuckin like the dead.

I would have to say Mark Hoppus as well, and for pretty much the same reasons. The songs weren't too hard to learn (except for some parts of stay together for the kids and adams song) and I had always loved blink.

He was the first bassist that I've heard of who could play like that. Jawdroppingly good, insanely fast. He was the reason I became addicted to Jazz. After that I learned about Jaco and Victor Wooten and my addiction went through the roof.

I started playing bass as my first instrument because my friends needed a bass player and I really just got hooked. I think its mainly because of Flea, Geddy Lee and Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy that I started and now I'm slowly improving.

I was at a show in Phoenix a couple of years ago; Beach Fossils, with Here We Go Magic opening up. HWGM isn't my style; too much wankery, not enough melody, and the lead singer's ego seemed a bit preponderous. So, I'm just marking time watching a technically proficient opening act who, though I don't much like them, were good musicians, so I was trying to learn what I could.

The bass player was Jen Turner. She was calm and composed on stage, sipping a drink in a little black dress. She looked like she should have been at the office Christmas party, or hanging out at an upscale wine bar. Instead, she was playing clear, complex, beautiful bass lines, foundational melodies that kept the chaos of the rest of the band together; she effortlessly, happily, enthusiastically, rocked. You can see her style a bit about four minutes into this video.

In the course of that set, I understood not only what a really good bass player can do for a band, but I saw how deeply, weirdly, undeniably fun playing bass can be. I bought a bass the next week.

So, Jen Turner, if you're out there, thank you. Now that you've left HWGM, I hope you find a fantastic band to play in.

I played guitar off an on in middle school and stopped when I got to high school. Then the first week or two of freshman year I was hanging out with group of kids that all already knew each other and one of them said I had really big hands. I jokingly said "yeah, I have bass player hands". One of the guys in the circle looked at me and said that if I could play bass he would fire his bass player and hire me immediately. That Christmas I asked for and got an Ibanez GSR200, shortly there after joined his band. I still haven't put down my bass and we've been best friends ever since.

One day a friend told me I look like a guy who would play bass and I was pretty dismissive about it because I saw bass as "not having character like guitar."

So I went home and looked up bass solos on YouTube. Being a pretty big fan of early Metallica I clicked on a vid of Cliff Burton playing Anesthesia(Pulling Teeth) and I was utterly blown away. He took the position of bassist and turned it into the coolest spot in the band with both his playing and his stage presence. He took a rhythm instrument and played lead with a "fuck you" attitude that grabbed onto my 15 year old spine and never let go.

Steve Harris, Geezer Butler, Victor Wooten, Flea and Lemmy played no small part either.

No shit - the bassist from Huey Lewis and the news. Don't even know his name, just remember as a kid watching vids of HL+TN. He was the dude in the back with shades on and a cig dangling from his mouth, grooving away. Ya, that did it for me.

Flea.
Before listening to the Chili Peppers, I had no idea that the bass could be such a cool sounding instrument! I thought that the bass player just sat in the back and played one note over and over again.....

When I was knee high to a grasshopper, my mom would play RHCP in the car, and I'd be mesmerized at every bass solo. Inspired me to join a jazz band just to learn bass, and now I have a bass of my very own.

The lack of keyboards in "smells like teen spirit" by Nirvana...
I was playing organ/synth parts in a primary school trio until the drummer and guitarist talked me into playing the electric bass so we could play Nirvana-covers and become rockstars.

Which instrument? Well, now I'm currently studying jazz double bass in university and I'm pursuing a professional career as a musician. So i guess you can say Krist Novoselic got me into bass...sort of

Geezer Butler and Peter Hook. I think a lot of the earlier Black Sabbath songs sound so badass because you always hear Geezer's bass lines blasting through the rest of the noise, not to mention the solo in N.I.B. As for Peter Hook, before I started listening to Joy Division, I had always kind of thought of the bass as just chugging along below everything else for the most part. Then, once I took a liking to JD, I realized how great a melodic, higher-pitched bass line can sound, almost like a lead instrument.